Colorblind

The endorsement of Barack Obama by Colin Powell is another blockbuster event of this campaign, but perhaps not for the reasons you think.  To be sure, it was among the most thoughtful and, as one of my sons suggested in an email, content-rich of the campaign season.   Perhaps most striking was that Powell was the first major political figure to squarely address the “he’s a Muslim” red herring properly.  “Mr. Obama is a lifelong Christian, not a Muslim”, he said, adding…the really right answer is, what if he is?  Is there something wrong with being Muslim in this country?  No, that’s not America.” To drive the point home, he spoke movingly of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a twenty year old New Jersey born Muslim serviceman who gave his life for us in Iraq.  That statement alone made Powell’s appearance on Meet the Press memorable.  But, again, I think it’s not the central story.

As we approach the election we are hearing once again about the so-called “Bradley Effect”, that once in the privacy of the voting both people will, belying polls, not vote for a candidate of Color.   And of course Powell was asked if his endorsement itself was motivated by the wish to see a fellow African American prevail.  While he responded directly to that in the negative, the fact is that Powell himself is the response. That’s what is so significant about his endorsement.  There was a time, and it was long ago, when one heard about Colin Powell being the first Black man to hold this or that job.  His various achievements can be counted as milestones in that regard, much like Thurgood Marshall’s elevation to the Court.  But the fact is, Americans no longer think of Powell in that narrow way.

Powell is a trusted leader and hero.  He was the commander of NATO and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  He was National Security Adviser and Secretary of State.  When we think of him, we think of the “Powell Doctrine”, the need to go to war only as a last resort, define the mission and use overwhelming force in the execution.  Of course there are those bigots who will always view a person of Color with prejudice.  But, I would venture that when thinking about General Powell, the vast majority of Americans are colorblind.  They think about his competence, about his proven ability to instill trust.  It wasn’t his being an African American that made some of us furious when he appeared before the United Nations in the run up to the Iraq War.  It was that a man so measured could allow himself to speak for what we thought was such a patently wrongheaded venture.

In his person, Colin Powell speaks volumes to why Americans are so drawn to Barack Obama.  We don’t see him as and African American candidate, but as an American Candidate who happens to be African American just as Jack Kennedy was a candidate who happened to be Catholic.  Powell’s service has transcended his racial identity.  It’s not that he ever sought to run away from his roots, but that ultimately it isn’t how he is judged.  Barack Obama, with a name of clear African origin, brought up by a White mother and grandparents, chose to proudly identify with the African side of his roots, but not to be defined by them any more or less than any other American is defined by theirs. 

So Obama is Black, Kareem Khan was a Muslim and, for that matter, this writer is a Jew.  What of it?  We are all citizens with the same vote.  Obviously Colin Powell wants us to think of him when we go to the polls, to consider the American Republican who will vote Democratic this year because that party's nominee is the right person to lead us at this time in our history.  Take that away from today’s endorsement and I think you’ll have it just right. 

Change is Coming

At long last, we’re entering the home stretch of an extraordinarily long Presidential campaign.  Perhaps what’s most remarkable is how consistent it has been from the start.  Barack Obama entered the race with a message of change.  Two years later, and despite a deft issue shift from Iraq to the economy, it remains his central theme.   On the other side, his principal opponents have been equally consistent.  Hillary Clinton ran on experience to the degree that when she finally sought the mantle of change-agent it wasn't credible.  Apparently having learned nothing from observing the Democratic contest, John McCain opted for the same message, making the same mistake.  Like Clinton, McCain, burdened by underlying message out of sync with the current environment, has had to constantly rearrange the deck chairs on what I remain confident is a sinking ship.  Clinton made major strategic mistakes and McCain has repeated them.  In some ways, they are so much alike, each viewing the Presidency as almost a birthright.  Clinton paid her dues at the side of her husband, McCain not only as a POW but has a third generation family warrior. Their shared feelings toward the “upstart” with the audacity to hope read on their faces with each encounter from her many Democratic debates to his this past Wednesday night.

Barack Obama says we should not be cocky and he is right.  There is much to do and being for him is not enough.  Everyone must vote.   That acknowledged, I continue to believe his victory will be decisive, perhaps of landslide proportions.  This is, and has always been, a watershed election.  Throughout history the party in power has never prevailed in the face of either an unpopular war or a bad economy.  We have both in spades.  If you need any further confirmation, consider that an astounding 90% of Americans think we’re headed in the wrong direction.  That alone suggests an appetite for change.  Bill Clinton famously said, “the era of big government is over”.  Considering the events of the past weeks, I’ll let you judge how accurate was his characterization.  What seems clear me in 2008 is that era of Ronald Reagan is over.  

Just as Communism turned out to be a bust, unregulated free markets have brought too many of us to the brink of bankruptcy.   The Reagan Revolution has run its course and been discredited.  Some of the intellectual conservatives are running for the hills, loudly distancing themselves from the ideology they so confidently espoused.  Some are actually supporting Obama.  They claim no conversion, but a disagreement over tactics.  Right, just as McCain’s laughable dissent from the war he wholeheartedly supported is over tactics not substance.  “We’re winning, my friends.”  The fact is that all that pompous absolutism that we’ve heard from the Right in the past decades is an Emperor without Clothes, a sham exemplified by faulty foreign and domestic policy.  Perhaps a percentage of the population remains fooled – working people and small business types who still think Republicans have been good for them or the Jews who claim (inexplicably) that Bush has been good for Israel.  But I think the majority of us know the score, perhaps not all can articulate it but we certainly can feel it.

Is it time for a change?   You bet it is, and change is coming on November 4.

The Press Gives a Pass

When they write the history of our times, I hope someone will examine the role played by the press.  It is an accepted truism that a free press is central to democracy, and thankfully that’s what we have.  American print and broadcast journalism rests on the shoulders of giants whose like can still be found in newsrooms and broadcast studios across the land.  Particularly reassuring are the young women and men dedicating their lives to high level reporting here and elsewhere including dangerous war zones, many of them elevating us with elegant prose.  So there is much to be thankful for, but the news isn’t universally good.  In fact, some of our most visible media either reflects the spirit of disturbing Hearst-like bias (right and left) or seems more attuned to showmanship than enlightenment.   It is that kind of journalism that has focused us on what can generously be called “the trivial” and, in doing so, has robbed its audience of the information it so desperately needs.  A huge percentage of our public is ill informed or worse, misinformed.

Without question, our level of knowledge and opinions are increasingly influenced by the ultimate in free “press”, the Internet.  Much of what is found there is surprisingly good, but all too often it more than meets or exceeds the “garbage in, garbage out” test.  Moreover, the lion’s share, including this writing, reflects one person’s unchecked opinion.  That may be ultimately self-correcting, though the jury is still out.  What we do know, is that some of the garbage promulgated online is repeated, lightly filtered (if at all), by professional cable and even broadcast media.  That, coupled with the “show” mindset, produces skewed or sound byte length “information” that is destined to be misleading or superficial.  Person-on-the street interviews reflect not so much the “garbage” maxim, but the sheer absence of substantive information.  Then too, again motivated in part by ratings and commerce, there is an atmosphere of overt or implied intimidation that keeps reporters and bay or impels them to over-balance, lest they be pushed off the assignment or lose their jobs.  All of that has played out during this election cycle, which explains but doesn’t excuse the present circumstances.   That brings me to the much-anticipated Vice Presidential Debate and the performance of the press in its aftermath.

Let’s forget for a moment all the spin about high and low bars and the contrast between the painful moments of dumbfounded hesitation witnessed earlier in the week and the virtual running at the mouth seen on Thursday.  In any self-respecting university, a student doesn’t get credit for the word count of a term paper but for the quality of its content.  Filling the time allotted with words should be no barometer of success.  To their credit, most polls and pundits scored the debate for, "may I call him Joe".  Even so, what really caught my attention was how many purportedly smart journalists felt compelled to declare how well Governor Palin had done.  It was the “fair” and safe thing to do.  The only hint of objective criticism was the widely declared cop out conclusion that the debate was “no game-changer”.  That may be true, but the preamble of meritorious performance left me speechless.  I sat through Thursday night’s session (watched on C-Span to be free of off camera press commentary), and saw a stream of robot-like and often garbled pronouncements – they weren’t responses – peppered with a few, often misquoted or disjointed, golden oldie zingers.  “Say it isn’t so Joe, there we go again.”  I witnessed a contrived folksy tone complete with winks that was at one patronizing and an insult to the adult intelligence of city and country mice alike.  It was bad enough on the first hearing, profoundly worse on the next day’s rereading of the transcript.  The press, by and large, gave her a pass.

I’m sure they (and there were some exceptions, usually blatantly partisan in tone) felt under great pressure to “be fair” and thus forgiving.  And here lies the problem.   As anyone who reads these posts knows, I don’t agree with John McCain.  In the sense of full disclosure, I am beginning to truly dislike him.  I think he would be a terrible, even dangerous, president and have often suggested so.  There are areas in which McCain has greater expertise than others.  To his detriment in the current environment, he knows little about the economy.  But I don’t for a moment question John McCain’s credentials or the fact that he is vastly more qualified to be president than the current occupant of the White House.   He is not, like his opponent, a gifted writer or orator, but his utterances are generally coherent.  Again, he surpasses the incumbent.   With that in mind, let’s return to Palin and the press assessment of her performance.  Many of them suggested that she rehabilitated herself after a disastrous two weeks, presumably with the American public or at least her partisans.  If that’s the case, shame on us, and shame on any such suggestion.  Perhaps the bar was set low for her, but can we accept one set so low for ourselves?

We are considering an occupant of the second highest office in the land.  This is potentially someone who will have her hand on the tiller of our nation.   She isn’t being considered for some tangential job and, if elected, she can’t be easily fired for at least four years.  The power of both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency, we have learned by bitter experience, is enormous.  Those who raise their hands and take to oath can change history and our lives with virtually no constraints.  Hello, members of the press.  I’m not concerned about the weight of the term paper submitted no matter how energetically and there is no “get-out-of-jail-free” card to be tossed on the Monopoly board.  The press, all their digging notwithstanding, continues to give this frighteningly unprepared and seemingly unqualified person a pass.  Yes her disjointed rambling may have made it at the PTA meeting, in a town with fewer inhabitants than a two block radius around my former New York residence or in running the sparsely populated state of Alaska whose fortunes rise with the price of oil just as those of the lower 48 diminish.  But we’re beyond that here and just getting out some words doesn’t cut it.  Much of the press gave Sarah Palin a pass.  We shouldn’t give them one.  They blew it and, in doing so, did us a great disservice.

I continue to believe, as I have from the outset, that in the end this election won’t be close.  Some fear that behind the curtain there will be voters who, despite what they tell pollsters, will submit to racial prejudice.  Perhaps, but I hope we are beyond that.  There are many reasons why John McCain is likely to go down.  He pinned his hopes, as we thought did Barack Obama, on issues of the war and foreign policy.  While now loudly claiming to be so foresighted about Fanny and Freddie, he has been blind sighted by the financial crisis.   Perhaps you can’t really see people's everyday struggle at the river’s edge in breathtaking Sedona.  But for many voters, John McCain will go down because of his cavalier decision on the Vice Presidency.  Sarah Palin may be judged harshly, but not so harshly and deservedly as the person she sometimes calls “her running mate”.    And the press, it shouldn’t give John McCain or Barack Obama an inch, and it certainly shouldn't give Sarah Palin a pass now or when she returns to the capital of her home state and once again becomes their problem not ours.

Past vs. Future

In a somber voice John McCain’s first response in last night’s debate started, “ on a sad note, Senator Kennedy is in the hospital.”  Interestingly no one picked up on yet another bit of inaccurate grandstanding – Kennedy checked out a mild seizure brought on by a change in medication but at that moment was back home watching the debate.   Once again, McCain was seeking to grab a headline as he has done so successfully all week.  Barack Obama rightly pointed to his many mixed messages from healthy economy to “suspending” campaign, but missed the point.  As long as your name gets out there, a new message means a new story.  That has been the McCain mantra throughout his career, with the exception perhaps of Chuck Schumer,  no one likes the cameras more.  From when he stepped on post-convention coverage of Obama’s acceptance speech, he has milked every headline available.  But it’s a risky strategy because at some point the wolf becomes more of a joke whose cries sound hollow, seen for the sound and fury that they really are.  The biggest such joke is playing out in the imploding of Sarah Palin.  Sarah – where is she now?

In a recent posting I suggested that the key question of this campaign was “are we better off now than we were eight years ago?”  To me last night’s debate added another, and in the end perhaps more powerful one.  It was what Alessandra Stanley’s article in the NY Times was rightly headlined “a generational clash”, the past vs. the future.  It was evident from the moment the two candidates took the stage.  John McCain looking at least his 72 years against the trim youthful Obama.  If the contrast between the television visages of Richard Nixon and Jack Kennedy were great, this picture presented something many times more powerful.  It’s true that Jim Lehrer began with a quote from Dwight Eisenhower, but McCain’s additional story about the World War II general, only underscored a mindset locked in the last century.  And there lies the underlying issue of this campaign, past vs. future.  In the end, all of McCain’s experience, as Hillary Clinton learned, may not be a winning argument, perhaps even more so.  After all Clinton’s candidacy offered an unprecedented opportunity of having a woman in the White House that, by definition, always promised a look ahead not backwards.  Even so, she couldn’t overcome Obama’s message and personification of change.

There is also a substantive, if ironic, message in these two campaigners.  The experienced McCain presents, perhaps a forceful character, but nonetheless an erratic one.  He may be knowledgeable, but more than often comes off as shooting from the hip.   If that’s seasoned, it’s counter intuitive.  In contrast, the “young” and “inexperienced” Obama comes off as measured and thoughtful.  His cool drives some supporters to distraction, but they are not thinking.  Who would you rather have pick up that phone at 3:00 AM, a guy who will shoot out an impulsive order or one who will pause to weigh his options and the consequences of acting one way or another.  It seems to me we have had more than enough shooting off from mouth and hip in these last eight years to last a lifetime.

I don’t envy the man who raises his hand to take the oath this coming January 20.  The problems he faces may be greater than almost any president in our history.  But I do hope he will be thinking about the future, not recounting golden oldies and anecdotes of past wars long since receded into history.  It’s what we will do not what we did.  It’s the future, stupid.

Who are we?

It’s become almost a cliché to say this is going to be a watershed election. There was a point early on when we thought it would be yet another referendum on Iraq.  Change vs. experience dominated the Democratic Primary debate.  And then, underscored by the continued meltdown of financial institutions, rising gas prices, home forclosurs and unemployment, all eyes were turned to the economy.   All these issues, and hopefully some serious thought to the environment, will play in November.  But I have come to a different view of what’s a stake when we vote.  I think this election is about who we are.

That issue has been building in my mind since the early primary days when, despite all the problems we face, candidates in both parties were scrambling to establish their religious bone fides.  Sure, whether they were wearing that silly American flag pin became a bone of contention.  But what really seemed to be urgently important was whether they believed in God.  If that wasn’t enough, it was what kind of Christian they were – a Mormon kind, a secret Moslem kind, an Evangelical kind, a correct pastor kind.  What any of that has to do with managing our foreign policy, righting our economy or pulling us back from the brink of environmental disaster, I just can’t fathom.  Nor for that matter do I believe the Founding Fathers, their personal faith notwithstanding, had that in mind as a qualification for governance.

I think, however, the “who we are” issue, really came to a head when John McCain made his Vice Presidential selection.  To be sure, it said a lot about McCain, the once claimed straight talker, and what kind of President he might be, but the reaction to it said much more about the country.  Perhaps more accurately it said something about what this country may be.  There are some who have defended Governor Palin as a reflection of long cherished American populism.  The real America is in the small towns and on the back roads.  That’s the right training ground and source of our leadership, the oxygen of our democracy.  Nonsense. 

In truth it never was, even in less complicated times.  Sure some of our leaders have hailed from small places, but most were well educated (even when self-educated) and well informed, certainly by the time the contended for high office.  This is 2008, and its time to put aside romantic and mythical notions.  The reality of the America that has led the world is not the back roads, but the urban sprawl.  It’s not one-room schoolhouses, but the greatest universities in the world.  It’s not fishing, hunting or the local repair shop but getting to the moon and counting the genome.  All those people who have come to these shores, and still do, are not making the journey to sip a Coke in the old barn, but to stretch their minds and expand their opportunities.  The country we rely on is at the cutting edge of technology not the creator of American Idol.

Some will think it un-American to say these things.  Some will feel I’m living in an elite bubble, not in touch with the real world.  Nonsense.  It’s time we should stop pretending that we live in or aspire to a log cabin.  It is unseemly and disingenuous.  The problems facing the next President will be so enormous and the world in which we play so complicated that only a fool, or a foolish and suicidal electorate, would think we dare put the “D” team in place. 

I’m not sure American voters understand the stakes and for sure we’re not giving the candidates the opportunity to lay them out for us.  Perhaps a majority of them, even after these disastrous eight years will think Mr. Smith can still make it in Washington, which of course was never the case.  I hope not.  This election will be a test, a measure of who we are and how we see ourselves as a nation.  If it goes in the direction of mediocrity, we’ll pay a very high price.  I don’t think it will, but if so, many Americans will be dispirited.  I for one will be at the head of that pack.

Are we better off?

Republicans have fallen in love with Harry Truman.  I was just a kid when “Give’m Hell Harry, was in office, but I doubt he would return the favor.  When it comes to this election campaign, I’d suggest two Republican President models to my fellow Democrats: Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.  Ike, in case you don’t remember, was the man who ran on the theme, “It’s time for a change”.  Sound familiar?  He won big.  Barack Obama has been running on an updated version of “time for a change”, and it’s worked well because in our national gut we know it’s true.  But Eisenhower was no great orator or communicator so the comparison with Obama has its limits.  That brings me to Reagan.  Like him or not, Nancy’s Ronnie had the gift.  But interestingly, his most powerful argument for change didn’t come in a big speech but in the debate when he turned to the camera and simply asked, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”  To me, that’s the logical and essential argument of this campaign going forward, not change, which is inspiring but vague.  Moreover, change, as we have seen can be co-opted, albeit disingenuously.  Are we better off, on the other hand, is a question that begs an answer, the engagement of the listener.  It is about the voter not the candidate.  And it’s a question John McCain dare not ask.

For sure Americans are concerned about our place in the world, the ill conceived or executed wars in which we are engaged, but their real concern is much closer to home, literally.  Everyone who hears the Reagan question will have an answer and it’s not one that John McCain and the Republicans will like.  With more than 80% of us thinking the country is headed in the wrong direction, it makes no sense to waste time on trivia, which is exactly where the Republicans, aided and abetted by the media they vilify, want us to do.  Voters, myself included, want to know that their next President will not merely feel their pain, but has a plan to ease it.  What we don’t need is another election about who has more faith, can frighten us more or is the more authentic American.  We want this election to get us headed in the right direction.

Bill Clinton’s brilliance in 1992 was to focus on the economy stupid.  Barack Obama could win in a landslide if he puts a laser-like focus on our comparative well-being.  Ask us if we’re better off and do it in every speech.  Make John McCain tell us with a straight face that the Republican approach, evident in his choices and the actions of his campaign, is going to take us in a new direction.  Let him tell us that re-energizing the Cold War and the Culture Wars is going to do much for lifting wages, gaining jobs, repairing our crumpling infrastructure and, yes, saving a planet headed toward destruction.  Ask us whether our nation’s financial health is better after nearly eight years of MBA stewardship, or who is going to address those deficits that Republicans (Bush and Reagan) seem to leave for Democrats to clean up.

I’m not pessimistic about November, quite the contrary, but I think the country could use a decisive election.  We also need a President who, in running for re-election four years from now, will be able to ask Americans if they are better off and be confident that the answer will be yes.  Time to move beyond the myopia of Alaska and old war stories and focus in the real issues, yours and mine.

Back to the Cold

Among my concerns about John McCain is that he seems so deeply locked in the past.  To me there is something beyond the perceived effectiveness of retelling his moving captivity story to pick up votes.  Watch the Senator next time he tells of his well worn story and you will see a level of emotional connection that he displays no where else.  Somehow he is invested in that war not won and altogether in past battles and enemies.  His unfamiliarity with the computer and email are just metaphors for a profound disconnect with the present and future.  But the really disturbing manifestation of this inability to let go of the past can be found it what can only be described as a seemingly concerted effort to resurrect the Cold War.

For sure, Vladimir Putin is no raging democrat, no more than say is Mubarak or was Musharraf.  The fact that the Soviet Union failed doesn’t mean that Russians embraced Western democracy.  In fact, beyond having no strong democratic tradition, their brief flirtation with it turned into an emotional and economic disaster.  The polished, but still autocratic, Putin is seen as the man who saved Russia and restored its self-image.  Perhaps George Bush’s looking into Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul was naive, but viewing the Russians more as partners than adversaries makes geopolitical sense. 

I don’t know what McCain and his new sidekick “reformer” are thinking.  Haven’t we had enough bravado and saber rattling in the last eight years?  Perhaps Sarah Palin is too young to remember, but I for one have no appetite for a return to those dark days and an ever-present threat of nuclear war.  In fact, if for no other than pragmatic reasons, we have to move in exactly the opposite direction. For more reasons than even a close neighbor from Alaska can understand, we need the Russians as allies.  Moreover, we are the last people to be lecturing about big powers marching in on lesser countries.  Hello, where is it that we have we been for most of this decade?   And by the way, given our inability to send sufficient troops to Afghanistan much less pose any real military threat to Iran, what army is it that Ms. Palin thinks we’re going to commit to helping keep little Georgia in our corner?

John McCain’s strong suit is supposed to be security and foreign policy.  Think about where he stands on those matters and the things that he says.  Speaking of suits, remember what happened to the one Alec Guinness boasted about in The Man in the White Suit?  OK, for those too young to remember, it disintegrated.  Effective foreign policy requires the ability to look at events without prejudice and preconceived ideas.  The past should always inform, but focusing all your attention on the rear view mirror is destined to put you at risk for a crash, perhaps a fatal one.  In that regard, we should all be concerned about John McCain’s blocked vision, which may get us into an even deeper hole than the one we’ve dug for ourselves under Bush.

A postscript.  The McCain campaign, now fixed on the re-elect W strategy of “fear and lying”, has had one major success.  They have intimidated the press big time.  Just imagine if Barack Obama, Joe Biden or even John McCain had looked blank when asked about the Bush Doctrine.  Would they get a pass for linking Iraq and 9/11 (as Palin did yesterday in a speech) at this late date?  I think not.  Sure she’s new on the block, but she is running for the second highest office in the land, right now not four years hence.    Calling Gov. Palin to task for what she says or doesn’t know isn’t sexist. It’s called reporting.  Perhaps McCain hasn’t recovered from the shell shock of Nam, but the press should get over being attacked from the podium in St. Paul.  He may have an excuse, they don’t.